Race Car Derby

My oldest and his friends took a woodworking class together.  In this class they built these fabulous cars.  At the end of the session all the classes in the area raced their cars together.  They all won awards.  My sons came in second in his weight class and his friend in the middle came in first.  It was a lot of fun!  Great job guys!

Some Soccer Season Snapshots

Soccer Season Starts Soon

As you can tell John is quite excited about soccer this season.  8-)  He is so grateful he is on a team with his friends Nathan, Ian and Josiah.  The other boys dads are coaching too.  The girls friend Lillan is on John's team as well, but luckily they have practice at the same time and games at the same time too.  It is going to be a fun season.  And as always Dad can't get out of coaching, so he is co-coaching with another dad for the girls team.  They love it.  The only hard part and good part is that both teams are playing almost every game at the same time.  8-)  The fields are right next to each other, but that means my head is going to look like I am watching a tennis match. Hey Dr. Chiropractor...I think I am going to need an appointment this season.  8-)

Our Valentine Party with our homeschool group

Today was great, celebrating Lincoln's 200th birthday and having a Valentine Party! It was good, oh and The Office and Survivor starts tonight, but that is just cherry on the top! Anyway, back to our party. Our homeschool group TEACH organized a party for all the kids so they could have games and exchange valentines, so they wouldn't miss out. John was hesitant to go, but as we were leaving said, "Mom, this was so much fun!" See, don't not do something because the kids groan about doing it. In the end they will see that trying new things, usually, is a lot of fun! Here are some pictures of our time.
Here are a couple of pictures of them making their Valentine bags to keep all the treats in.

Then they played games and made some more crafts. And even got their face painted.

We had lunch after the games. Pizza, carrots and grapes.
Then our leader at TEACH talked to the kids about how you can show love in so many different ways, and asked the kids to tell how they feel loved by their parents. Emily said she felt love when she sucked on her lollipop. Ok, not in the mood to share, oh well. There were a lot of different answers and it was great to hear their answers. Then she went on to explain the greatest demonstration of love, which is Jesus voluntarily dying for each one of us. There is not a better picture of such love! After clean up, we all headed into different age groups to hand out Valentines. The three girls were all in the Pre-K and Kindergarten group and then John was with the early elementary group.

They had so much fun getting Valentines from all the kids. The girls kept holding up each one to show me and feeling so special that the other kids thought of them. It was a great experience for them, and I am so glad that we were able to make it. Then we headed home and sat and poured out all of the Valentines and candy. We read all the different ones.
It is nice to be part of a homeschool group where you can do something like this and then you know they aren't missing out on the fun things that go on in school too. It was a great day! John is now excited to hand out Incredible Hulk Valentines at One Day Enrichment tomorrow! Fun times!